Days in Paradise and
by Axatullux
Summary: Very heavy AU and even alternate versions of real-life places. Stella is an orphan whose been homeless for more than 8 years. Mac is a former marine and football player who becomes a detective in the MC Crime Lab. Updated 9-23 and in five chapters.
1. The Carjacking

October 7, 1993 in Michael City, Carryuga.

It was an unseasonably warm October evening on the city's northwest side. Frankie Mala and his girlfriend Veronica Smith were driving home from a party at 1:40 am. Frankie was somewhat beer-bellied and very drunk, while Veronic was sweating from all the drinking at the rave party earlier that night.

Frankie Mala and Veronica though suddenly, due to poor judgement, ended up in a very run-down and derelict part of Michael City just north of Marisa and Jackson Streets. The surrounding area was mostly deserted save for a liquor store on the corner with katy-bars on its front entrance. Weeds and rogue trees had overgrown parts of the surrounding neighborhood due to decades of neglect and blight. The streetlights were a hellish shade of orange and yellow giving the neighborhood an ugly brownish glow.

"Frankie, we're in a very bad part of town. I hope you know what you're doing" said a somewhat scared Veronica although Frankie laughed at the -barried liquor stores, dirty windows and graffiti everywhere were all signals that the area was unwelcoming to anyone who had money.

A drunk Frankie responded, albeit awkwardly due to the alcohol "Don't worry honey. Nothings gonna happen to us. What makes you think that a bunch of homeless fuckers are going to scare us anyway"

Both laughed, almost unaware of that three figures were approaching them. As Frankie and Veronica were laughing hysterically, almost jokingly trying to scare each other, they heard the sound of crow bars hitting the car, and both suddenly froze in terror. Frankie noticed a gun pointed at his driver's side window with a female figure.

"Get the FUCK out of the car! Both of you!" screamed the woman, her barely visible face showing a genuine rage. Although barely lit, her face was lit enough to show it in detail despite poor lighting. She had long curly hair that was just a little over shoulder-length, a big nose, and big eyes that were very light colored, light enough to easily distinguish her iris from her pupils although her eyebrows scrunched up, indicating that she wasn't messing around. Her lips stretched in rage, teeth showing. She and the other two were dressed in somewhat dirty clothing, none were wearing baggy jeans.

Veronica was pulled out of the car by force by another female, this one had long, somewhat wavy hair, dark eyes, and very petite form. Veronica was shoved away from the car and tripped over the curb, landing on her hands which landed on a pile of garbage on the side of the curb.

Frankie on the other hand had a gun pointed at his ear, the look of terror on his face, Stella having a sadist and murder look on her face. "Now get the fuck on the ground!" yelled the Greek woman.

"B..b...bbu..but" stuttered the drunk Frankie

"SHUT UP!" the woman screamed, jamming the barrel of the gun at the back of his neck, and then kicking him into the middle of the street. Frankie suddenly, jumped, in an attempt to stop her but the gun fired, hitting him square on the knee, causing him to collapse onto the ground, yelling in pain. Veronica screamed in horror at what was happening. Bonasera herself aimed the gun square at Veronica's face. Stellas eyes were hidden by the shadows cast by the shape of her nose and eye sockets. and then getting into the car which drove off. The police showed up, sirens flashing but the three women though were gone, leaving only Frankie and Veronica shaken in the middle of the pothole-laden street.


	2. The Food Snatching and Foot Chase

May 27, 1996

Stella slowly snuck out from behind a dumpster, eyeing an unsuspecting person with a McDonald's bag in his hands. The man looked very exhausted and worn out, likely due to physically and emotionally exhausting work. Her only accomplice now was Angell, the other, Aiden Burn was killed after being hit by a fire engine during an emergency call.

Both Stella and Angell, though in their early twenties looked like they were at least forty, being homeless for over five years now. With nighttime having descended on the cityscape, the man with the bag of fast food was walking through a poorly lit section of street when Stella sprinted from behind the dumpster, and with near lightning speed, snatched the bag of food from the guys hand and dashed off into the night.

"HEY! HEY! HEY!" the man yelled, with a commanding voice, pursued the woman. Having been running for nearly two blocks, Stella barely avoided being hit by a car, as she ran a red light on a busy intersection. The man himself dodged a pedestrian and kept running after Stella, and flashed a police badge and nearby people, many of them impoverished, hid in the doorways to get out of his way.

"Get back here!" he yelled, gradually closing in on her. He pulled out his walkie-talkie and called the MC PD. Having chased Stella to a dead-end alleyway, he saw her, looking back, as she threw the bag over the fence that was just beyond the cul-de-sac. He chased her, but she had managed to get over the fence and with the food, had fled into the night.

The man, was a rookie police officer named Mac Taylor.

Taylor climbed over the fence and continued to chase after her. Having chosen one of the alley ways, he heard the sound of shuffling behind a dumpster before a ragged-looking Stella had suddenly erupted from the space between the apartment and the dumpster. Despite her quick reaction, Mac had grabbed onto Stella's hole-ridden shirt, causing her to stumble. He then slid his foot in front of her leg and caused her to trip, dropping the bag onto the ground. Having grabbed the food from the ground, he continued to chase her down the street.

Despite being worn out, he caught up with the homeless Greek woman and tripped her once more, causing her to fall onto the sidewalk. He abruptly pinned her on the ground with his knee, in order to prevent her from escapting this time.

"This is officer Taylor, over. I've been attacked by a suspect, presumably a homeless woman who I have on the gr…." Mac said before he felt another person tackle him to the ground, allowing Stella to escape, albeit without the food.

Having fought this other person off, Mac realized that the person he had chased for several blocks had escaped. Instead, he helped handcuff a 20-something young male who he instantly recognized as a wanted drug dealer, Ethan Burkman. Having handcuffed him, the police cars arrived and Burkman was taken into custody. Stella had however, gotten away and fled into the night.


	3. Reminiscing I

Mac Taylor couldn't shake off the thought of this homeless woman he had encountered on the streets of Michael City in various neighborhoods over the years.

Having gone on a date with Aubrey Hunter, he and Aubrey were walking home to Mac's apartment on the city's west side after seeing the Michael City Pachyderms who suffered a 13-24 loss to Carmenapolis two hours ago. Both being lifelong fans of the team, Aubrey was clearly glum over the loss, both were walking home along a residential street on the city's south side, which was far less impoverished and much safer than where Mac had encountered the homeless woman several times, weeks earlier, several miles north.

"Mac, can you believe they could lose a game like that? I mean, they scored ten points in the first two minutes of the game, but then completely gave up that many points to the Outlaws? What the hell is that all about?" Aubrey ranted, politely and quietly.

However, Mac completely missed what Hunter was saying, as he was having flashbacks of the homeless woman he encountered numerous times, including actually even in his own backyard, stealing several tomatoes from his backyard lawn over a month ago.

The scenes, those images, of one of her vivid eyes just barely visible from a poorly lit space between apartment buildings, the way she looked at him, a combination of fear, yearning, anger, suspicion, the lack of words coming from her, it was one of many times Mac had encountered this homeless woman.

Having been assigned to patrolling the neighborhood, their paths crossed several times over the two years since Mac himself had gotten off the streets after six months without a home. He couldn't help but remember seeing Stella when they were both at a homeless shelter in May of 1994.

"Mac? Mac? Are you listening?" Aubrey raised her voiced, flustered that she saw Mac, almost completely oblivious to her talking. Mac suddenly snapped back to reality and shook his head. "Sorry Aubrey. Something just came over me." Mac said, slightly embarrassed.


	4. Taken In

November 19, 2000…..

*Peter Gabriel's "Under Lock & Key" plays in the background*

Stella was perched in a pigeon-like pose on top of a vacant building, nude on the edge of the building, staring at the setting sun as it shined from the southwest. Her eyes, normally gray and cold, actually showed sparkle, for the first time since running away from home back in New York. She was perched on the edge of the roof, and didn't seem to be bothered by the 41-degree temperatures outside. She was perched in that position for more than an hour, staring towards the northwest, where the winds were coming from, skies turning shades of dull blue and green as twilight began to set in.

Bonasera had now been homeless for eight years, both of her accomplices Angell and Burn were killed in a shootout with Michael City Police several years ago during an attempted robbery at a convenience store. Stella herself had gotten away from police when the shootout occurred. Both Angell and Burn opted to engage the police in gunfire, against Stella's warnings and paid the ultimate price, for nothing. Bonasera herself had fled from the scene long before the police showed up but Angell and Burn had somehow lost Stella. February of 1998 marked the turning point for Stella, when for the first time; she had actually been completely alone. That point onwards saw her Statue-of-Liberty persona begin to break down and be replaced by a near 'feral child' pattern.

Now, she was alone, all alone, with no one to talk to. She was alone. All alone. She would sometimes sneak into thrift stores especially due to her skill at picking the locks and stealing cloths from time to time. Bonasera was desperately alone now. Both accomplices were dead, a third female that she eventually found was arrested and jailed. What happened that woman, Stella never found out. Stella looked at the sun as it shined a dull yellow, just before it touched the southwestern horizon, the autumn winds causing her to shiver but she did not budge from her birdlike perch on the edge of the roof. For the first time since 1991, Bonasera's eyes actually showed some sparkle, like she desperately wanted end this way of life, either by getting a home or death. She looked at the sun, and was perched almost motionless on the edge of the roof, 150 feet above the street. She had a life-long love of watching the sunrise and sunset, when sleeping patterns allowed for them.

Stella was completely alone, as 2000 neared its end and the 2001 would begin in only a matter of weeks. With Angell and Burn long dead, and another long since taken away by police, there was no one else to talk to now. Stella had hidden in an abandon building with degraded walls. The isolation, loneliness, all took their toll on her. Stella could sense major changes in the area around her. Much of the gang activity that she was part of on one side and fought against, as a rival gang member, had dwindled considerably due to much heavier police presence.

Add to that, the forces of gentrification were closing in on her. Having often wandered miles often everyday for scavenging food, Stella had now rarely ventured outside of the derelict apartment except for scavenging for food, even resort to eating grass. Her Statue-Of-Lady-Liberty determination was now completely gone, replaced by a sense of emptiness that was incomprehensible to 'normal' people. The only way out it now seemed was either dying due to the elements, by the hands of the police (Gangs long disappeared from her neighborhood), continue to live indefinitely in isolation in the shadows of society, go to prison for all the shoplifting, robberies and two carjackings, or even end up at a mental institution. None of these gave Stella any sense of hope, all made her fall into a 'feral child' despair. It seemed to be a matter of time before any or all of these fates would meet her.

"Uhhh….excuse me miss!" a voice from below through but although she was aware that someone noticed her perched, nude on the edge of the roof, 150 feet above the street, Bonasera did not respond. A tear had formed at the end of her eye and flowed down her cheek. She knew something was going to happen soon but she had become used to life on the streets. Police officers had barricaded the building Stella was perched atop of, lights flashing, guns drawn but the Chief of Police told them not to use them.

"Okay, we're going to get her down. I don't see her attempting suicide but we have to be careful officers. The woman could have mental problems." Mac said, on the radio. Suddenly, Stella backed away from the edge of the roof, and out of sight of the officers. It was just after sundown and Stella began crying. It had been nearly a year since she talked to anyone, even to say hi and now she was so socially isolated that she almost began to exhibit odd behaviors for a woman of 27 years. She cried when remembering the faint memories of her childhood, and how the world unraveled since her father died in a car accident when she was eight, her mother dying of leukemia a year-and-a-half later. Bonasera lay on her side there, on the roof, naked, curled up in a ball, tears flowing down from the corner of her eyes.

As the crying subsided, Stella was distracted by the sound of police sirens, and helicopters, Stella scrambled to put clothes back on and ran back into the building to hide from the police to find a place to hide. "We know who you are Stella. There is no escape!" a gruff-sounding voice said through a bullhorn. She escaped back into the building, and was now in a dark room with walls degraded, with holes and gaps large enough for her to squeeze herself into. Bonasera had hidden inside the wall, while waiting for the police and others to search the place and hope they don't see her. The walls had been so degraded that much of the plaster had long fallen off. The pressure of her squeezing through the wall planks was causing the remaining plaster to fall off and onto the floor.

All of a sudden, the wall she was hiding in, began to buckle, catching the attention of the police officers hoping to rescue Stella from the building, not that she wanted to. After over ten years of life on the streets and the sight of shootings with police, Stella learned to avoid them at all costs. But she was now trapped with nowhere to go. The place was barricaded off now. Stella had nowhere to go, almost trembling with fear, even with the sight of Mac. The look of fear was evident in her eyes which were peeking through the cracks in the wall.

Just as she shifted between the plaster and baseboard, Stella's clothes got caught on nails and wooden boards that she could not easily shift further and was now trapped. Stella, panicking, tried to yank herself free of whatever was tangling her. The bars holding up the plaster had snapped, and the entire wall had suddenly collapsed onto the floor several feet in front of the officers, Stella falling onto the floor with rubble falling on top. Just as Stella began to get herself back up, and wipe the dust off her face and curly hair, a pair of very strong hands had grabbed Stella's upper arms and hoisted her back on her feet.

"We got her! We got her!" said one of the officers through a walkie-talkie.

White with a combination of rage and fear, Stella thrashed around violently, hoping to free herself.

"We got her. We got her but we need back up!" one of the officers bellowed into the walkie-talkie. Other officers were heading in to help with flashlights illuminating the dungeon like room.

"Get away from me!" she shrieked, thrashing around, kicking at the officers. A kick in the inner leg of one of them was enough to cause him to accidentally let go of her arm and she freeing herself from the other's arm. She began to flee the building, and was at the second floor window; she jumped through the window, shattering whatever was left of the glass, grabbed a tree branch and reduced her fall. She landed on her feet and began to flee but it was too late as the MCPD had now surrounded the property. A foot tripped Stella, causing her to fall onto the unkempt grass. Not quite back on her feet, she had used her battered hands to keep pushing forward to resume running. Within seconds, like a bunch of defense players tackling the ball carrier at a football game, At least three officers had tackled Stella, restraining her, ensuring she didn't escape this time.

Two of the officers were Peyton Driscoll, and the other was officer Quinn Shelby. Both were very agile women and both had tackled Stella to the ground. A third officer was Valens. Even with their strengths, they had a hard time restraining Stella. Stella even attempted to bite one of their hands when it unintentionally got too close to her mouth. After her hand came loose from one of the hands gripping her, she grabbed a hand and bit one of the officer's fingers. Driscoll suddenly screamed in pain for a split second and pulled away, clenching her hand with her other due to it bleeding and ran to the cruiser to get first aid. Another officer came to help restrain Stella.

"Let go of me! LET GO OF ME!" Stella kept shrieking. The officers knew that she wasn't going to go quietly and they called out a fifth cop. All of them had finally strained Stella to the ground but her violent thrashing, kicking and screaming was still hell for the officers to handle. For such a Greek woman of 5'9'', Stella was surprisingly strong for a woman of her size and shape not to mention having amazing fighting skills, probably learned from her years of eluding both rival gangs, and law enforcement.

Bonasera's constant thrashing and screaming was such that they had no choice but to use a tranquilizer dart to finally sedate her. A dart was plunged into the side of her arm. Within seconds, the violent thrashing subsided, though she still struggled, the screaming gave ways to desperate moans before everything was quiet all of a sudden. After her thrashing stopped and she relaxed within ten to twenty, due to the sedative, they finally hoisted her up onto her feet but she did not stand on them and instead, the two had to lift her off the ground and drag her on her feet. Mac, as a rookie officer was deeply shaken by the ordeal. Bonasera had been covered in dust, dirt, grime, and looked very unkempt, her brown curly hair and tan fan soiled with dirt and dust, one from the combination of the years of living homeless and the other from the dust from the high-rise raid. Her face was almost soaked in tears, Bonasera crying, albeit quietly, not so that the officers will not noticed anyway. Having been hoisted up by her upper arms just below her armpits by Driscoll and Quinn, her head draped forward, her hair had now concealed her face in a messy, unkempt curtain but evidence of sweat and tears had turned her messy, unkempt curls of hair into wavy strings.

All of the officers were sweating profusely and uncomfortably hot despite the temperatures being in the upper 30s.

An ambulance came in to take Stella in. Mac had approached Peyton to see how she was doing. Her hand was now wrapped in gauze bandages to stop the bleeding. "Are you okay Peyton?" asked Mac.

"Yes, I'm fine. Nothing like being bitten by a raging homeless woman, like being mauled by an angry lion. It hurts like a son of a bitch" a grimaced Peyton replied as she clinched her hand, teeth baring at the pain of the wound after applying disinfectant, which stung. The force of Stella's bite left an ugly wound on Peyton's middle and index finger and hurt like hell.

"God dammit. I never, ever, faced this kind of ordeal with any homeless person like tonight. Quite frankly, I don't know how she's going to find any easy way out of this, now that she could either face prison for assaulting a police officer, or being sent to a mental institution. She really lost her mind there Mac. She really lost it Mac" A very solemn and somewhat angry Driscoll told Mac. Driscoll had dealt with homeless people before of both genders but Stella was probably the hardest of them all to detain.

"Mac. We got info on the subject we captured just now. Her name is Stella Bonasera. She is 27, and is homeless. She is implicated in several robberies, a carjacking eight years ago and another attempt in 1998. She was born in the city of Philadelphia but went missing shortly after her mother died. She somehow either got on a train or was smuggled here." A stern Quinn told him.

"Thanks Shelby" a grateful Mac responded. "I'll look more into her background and see what else we can find out about her and her life." Mac had a flashback all of a sudden when his mind went back to 1983-ish. He had recently come home after surviving the Lebanon barracks bombing with a nasty injury to his chest. But before he could recollect the name Bonasera, a voice called him to the ambulance.

Mac turned to the ambulance with Stella now on the stretcher being taken in. Mac approached her, and checked to see how she was doing. Although sedated and no longer thrashing around anymore, Bonasera was breath fast and deep, her lower jaw twitching, eyes staring either into the sky or at nothing. Her face was now cleaned off, revealing a vivid tan face. There were no visible injuries but her expression was of fear, shock, and exhaustion. Her lower jaw kept twitching as she kept breathing frantically due to bouts of distress, tears welling from both eyes. She could not fully cry but tears still welled from her eyes. The paramedics had now taken Stella on her stretcher into the ambulance. The doors closed as the ambulance drove north, sirens wailing along the way.

They found the woman they had spent years looking for, for a series of robberies that some in the MCPD believed were committed by her and her now-deceased accomplices from 1991 to 1997. She was also wanted for a carjacking committed they believe, by her as well, in 1993, which unintentionally resulted in a human trafficking ring being broken up when Frankie was apprehended by the police. His apprehension was due in part to his car being hijacked and stolen by Stella and her gang. Nobody ever claimed the reward for his capture as Stella and her gang had long fled the scene with the car.

The car itself was eventually recovered by the police a few months later, although the occupants that hijacked it were long gone. That same vehicle functioned as a shelter from a severe arctic outbreak that occurred in January of 1994.


	5. Birdy Bonasera

**The next day… **

Mac was at the hospital, Peyton Driscoll was there with her husband John Driscoll. He walked up to the front desk.

"I'm here to see a patient named Stella Bonasera" he told the receptionist. Voice being as dull as an aging Soviet bureaucrat, she utter "Room 438, go to the elevator, go the fourth floor and going right, she is at the end of the hallway."

"Thank you" Mac thanked the receptionist despite being turned off by her dull persona. He, Peyton, John, all met up with detective Valens in the elevator to visit the woman. After a tiring walk down almost the entire length of the hallway, they finally reached the door of Stella's patient room. The door though was locked, two female doctors were looking in her ears to check if there were any infections, they checked her breathing, heartbeat, they found no evidence of recent or past sexual assaults. No drugs in her, nor alcohol.

Stella's face was nearly expression-less, eyes were dead center, looking either at the wall or at nothing. It took over two hours to clean her up after apprehending her not to mention the bad B.O. issue due to it being unusually dry and limited access to hygiene for so long. The apparent ordeal that night was enough to cause her to mentally crack and after that, Stella had almost completely shut off from the world, literally barely responding to stimuli such as someone calling her name, despite the tranquilizer serum wearing off, she was no longer resisting the doctors although sometimes they had to keep her on the patient bed during routine checkups especially due to her ingrained habit of occasionally wanting to look out the window to look at the sunset. The room was facing west.

"Apparently, they found Stella perched like a pigeon, you could say, on the edge of the bed. They say she thinks she's a bird." Valens awkwardly told Mac, not sure how to describe Stella's behavior after being detained. "Be careful Mac, she isn't very cooperative".

With the nurse swiping a card through the door slot, a click indicated the door being unlocked. After entering, he sees Stella apparently asleep, facing away from them. In reality, she was actually awake but with her eyes barely visible above the blanket wanted nothing to do with whoever was present at her hospital room, the experience of the whole thing immensely humiliating beyond comprehension.

"Hello…." Mac gingerly greeted Stella, but she was not responding but unknown to Mac she was awake. Looking away, her eyes grew angry, hands squeezing the pillow in front of her. Mac approached her slowly but Stella began breathing heavier and faster. Although he couldn't see her face directly, the eyebrows indicated that she was not in a welcoming mood.

*Cut to a front view of her face*

Stella was lying on her left side and with her face on one of the pillows, her eyes narrowed in anger, teeth showing, nose scrunching up, at the memory of what happened, just eighteen hours earlier. The humiliation, the terror that fried her entire nervous system, the rage, the pain, both physical and emotional, of being apprehended and taken away like that, the thought that she would be cut down by those cops, much like what happened to her two friends and accomplices, years ago.

Now, with them long dead, everyone seemed like either an enemy or a total stranger, in addition, Stella was now in a strange and totally unfamiliar place, a completely strange setting, with the lingering thought that death would claim her any moment now. Were they going to euthanize her? (Which of course not). Would she be in this 'strange' place forever? If there was Hell, the concept of it being underground lava tunnels sounded closer to paradise compared to this cold, gray, dark, dank place she was currently in.

The shellshock of her ordeal last night completely made her shut off from everybody to where she didn't even talk at all.

Reading and interpreting the body language, Mac quietly backed away and left the room, with the thought that she needed a quiet time alone to mentally recover from the ordeal of last night.

**Two weeks later…**

Stella was once again perched on the edge of the bed, in the trademark pigeon like post, her feet resting on the bed frame, her pose reminded Mac very much of actor Matthew Modine's pose on the cover for the 1984 film "Birdy". Mac watched Stella, making sure she was not suicidal or attempting anything while the doctors were away, the sun was a fiery pink as it almost touched the southwest horizon, except this time there were occasional snowflakes falling, winter being around the corner. Christmas was only two weeks away but it was the last thing on his mind. Stella was perched on the bed frame, feet almost gripping it, but she was almost completely motionless, except for occasional eyelids blinking.

Mac felt a strange attraction to Stella although not by erotic means even though she was without a shred of clothing on her, she staring at the sun, arms folded around her chest, like as if she were freezing. She was pretty much curled up in a ball, except instead of lying down on her side; she was perched on the edge of the hospital bed, her face illuminated by the setting sun. It was an odd sight, almost like something out of a movie shoot. He wanted to know what happened. What could've turned her into this? How she managed to survive for over a decade without a home.


	6. Cold Escape

Mac Taylor was scrambling down the hallway, towards Stella's patient room. When he reached her room, he noticed she was gone, and the room was freezing cold, the window being wide open, curtains fluttering.

"Stella!" Mac yelled as he ran to the window, his head peering out, looking around, even looking down to see if she jumped out the window but he did not see her, knowing that even if she fell, she would've suffered massive injuries or died upon impact from that height. Turning north, Mac found Stella, shifting along the ledge, towards a tall tree, roughly two windows from him. "Don't move!" Mac yelled as he called for backup. "I need backup!" as he watched Stella gradually inch closer to the tall branches of the tree.

Stella though didn't seem to show much, if any fear in her eyes but a more determined expression, more a determination to get the hell out of here. Stella may have been 'rescued' but the thought of the streets felt better than being confined in the poorly lit patient room which often reeked of mildew due to a broken water pipe that caused mold problems.

"Stella, don't move!" Mac yelled once more. She turned her head towards him, but ignored his warnings and kept on shifting closer to the tree branches.

"I'm not staying here!" Stella yelled back, the first time in more than a month she said anything to anybody. She kept on shifting across the ledge, towards the tree, even braving the blustery cold weather.

"She's trying to escape by grabbing onto the tree branches! Get some warm blankets or she could die of hypothermia very quickly!" Mac said into a walkie-talkie, the temperatures were in the low teens and it was windy outside.

Stella began shivering, since her physical body had acclimatized from constant exposure to the elements and into a more sheltered environment since being taken over there, off the streets two months ago. Stella had finally reached the tree, the officers could not reach her, nor did they attempt to, since grabbing her ankle or arm risked her falling. Instead, they had carefully placed cushions on the ground, moving it in case she feel while carefully not trying to catch her attention.

Stella leapt off the ledge, and grabbed hold of a thick tree branch without snapping it. Snow fell off and onto her hair shoulders. As Stella climbed down the tree, she landed on snow-covered grass below and ran from the place, doctors, and nurses chasing after her although the icy conditions limited their running ability. They knew though that due to being barefoot, Stella could suffer frostbite within minutes and scrambled, across dry ice-free surfaces as fast as possible.

Stella dashed across the parking lot, cutting in front of an off-duty ambulance whose tires screeched when the driver slammed on the brakes. Braving the biting cold, Stella escaped through the bushes in the parking lot, and into the neighborhood, cops closing in on her. Stella ran into a heavily wooded park a block away, and hid in the bushes. The effects of the exposure to intense cold began to take it's toll on her, as the doctors and a police officer converged on her.

Having tracked her footprints to the bushes, the nurse and officer found Stella, curled up in a ball, shivering profusely. One of the cops took off his jacket, and gave it to Stella to warm her back up, to stop the effects of of the shivering cold, Stella did not fight back this time, but simply limped back to the hospital, with the cops, obvious that it was no use escaping from the hospital, due to the extreme cold.

"Is she okay?" Mac frantically asked the nurse who told him she was okay but was suffering from hypothermia."Thank God..." a relief Mac said to the nurse as he went over to see Stella. "I've gotten some background on her. She was born in Philadelphia on December 1, 1974 to Italian diplomat Sabastian Bonasera and Greek painter Eleni Akros." Mac tells the nurse.

"What else do you know about her, other than that she committed many robberies, murdered two people, committed two carjackings, and assaulted two women in 1995?" a gruff officer said, obviously in a bad mood, as always.

"Stella's father Sabastian died in 1981, when she was 6 years old, her mother died in a car accident in 1977. Due to a foreclosure, the Bonasera family lost everything, her father eventually drank himself to death in 1981. From what records show, Stella has no other family."

Scotty Valens arrived and brought in more info on Stella. "Stella Bonasera ran away from several foster homes throughout much of the mid to late 1980s. She apparantly vanished in 1991 and was never heard of again." Valens told Mac, who was sipping coffee, trying to warm himself back up after being outside in little more than a button shirt in the bitter cold. Valens continued: "They declared her legally dead in 1998, no one ever could find her after she disappeared there." Valens continued. "And it turns out that somehow she managed to wind up here, in Michael City, nine hundred and twelve miles away." he continued, astonished that this Greek woman could ended up slipping through society's radar for so long.

"Stella's gonna be here awhile Mac. I don't know what it is about her that interests you. She's mentally ill Mac." Valens said to Mac, trying to redirect his mind away from her.


	7. Out of the shell

"Sebastian Bonasera was your father Stella. I knew him very well" a bittersweet Mac told Stella. "He died in a car crash when you were five years old", he told a sobbing Stella, apparently a blend between scared of the 'new' life that she was heading towards and also the knowledge of how close she came towards actually ending up at a mental institution. "How did you get her to Michael City Stella? How did you survive all this time?" Mac asked Stella, with a sad fascination considering how few people survived more than two years, let alone eight, on the streets of Michael City.

"Stella, you were declared legally dead back in Philadelphia in 1999 and you were here, in Michael City all this time! How did you get here?" Mac asked Stella, his voice was now raised almost to where he was ordering her to do something. "Huh?" He continued.

"Me, Jess and Aiden, all got on a freight train in a railyard, one night after we escaped a drug kingpin. He was chasing all three of us and after several minutes of non-stop running, we had lost him. What we thought might have been an escape route, we had jumped off an overpass into a freight car that was directly below the bridge. We had landed in the debris and after an hour or so, we fell asleep. It was very dark that night, and though it was probably too dark for him to see us, it probably was sheer luck he didn't see us in the car below." Stella told Mac, after going through difficulty of recollecting what happened.

"We fell asleep that night, barely but when we did, we were out like lights. The next day though, we woke up and realized that the train was moving, moving at some high speed. There was no way we were going to get out at that speed, fearing that we would be crushed under the weight of the cars had we landed on the tracks or been pulled under the wheels. We stayed in there until it stopped which seemed like forever."

Mac listened, fascinated yet heartbroken at her story. "When the train stopped, we had found ourselves in a totally different place, different city, and different life. When we looked outside, we recognized the skyline. We had ended up 912 miles away, in Michael City. We were alone."

Stella, handed him a photo of her, Jess, Aiden and five others who were in the gang she and the others were in. Mac looked at them, knowing about this gang. "Jess and Aiden are both dead. I don't know what happened to the others but they vanished shortly after the shootout on Albert St." Stella told him, holding her hands together trying to hide her sobbing from him.

Mac then talked to her. "These five others, you, Jess and Aiden, were with…they're all dead. Of these eight, you are the only one still alive. You were the only one that survived." he calmly told her. Stella broke out in tears, in grief and in deep sadness, the mental effects of those eight years had left her shattered and reduced to practically nothing. Now the new fear was now potentially confronting the consequences of what she had done, especially after that night she was apprehended by the cops that night.

**Sometime later...**

Mac woke up late in the middle of the night, it was the fall of 2003 and it was cold and windy. The curtains were fluttering with the wind, the sound of fallen leaves rustling along the streets of Czarnik Ridge, a suburb roughly 5 miles west of where Stella was apprehended but in a far safer, and affluent neighborhood.

Mac was wondering where Stella was when he suddenly felt a figure climbing onto the bed, it was Stella herself. She was in a gray bathrobe which revealed near perfectly fit legs and strong-looking feet. Her normally curly hair was mostly wavy and somewhat straight.

Just as Mac was about to lift himself out of bed, Stella had shoved him back onto the bed, laid herself on top of him, Mac was like "Stella what are you doi….". Before he could finish his sentence, he felt their lips latch together, her hair shielding both of their faces from the outside world.

**The next morning...**

Mac woke up one morning to find that Stella was not on the bed even though it was barely sunrise. He was groggy but darted off the bed worried about Stella when he couldn't find her. "Stella? Stella?" Mac yelled out, hoping to catch her attention but no answer. Mac then saw the window was opened, wide open and he looked out the window and found her, latched onto a branch with her legs wrapped around it to ensure she doesn't slip.

"Stella. Get down from there!" Mac raised his voice, trying to talk to her but she didn't budge. She was perched on the tree, roughly 50 or so feet off the ground. Apparently, she had climbed out the window and up the tree and climbed as far up the tree as she felt comfortable going. Her face was looking roughtly east-southeast, the direction where the autumn sun was rising. A neighbor came out of her house to see what was happening and was gasping in shock at the sight; a grown woman was near the top of the tree.

Stella was wearing a green and sky-blue sundress and while seemingly dangerously dangling over the edge, did not seem slightly afraid. She was enjoying the view of the sunrise and did not seem to know or care that she was scaring the neighbors below. Mac clearly wasn't necessarily afraid that thick branch would snap and she fall and badly hurt herself but he was eager for her to come down. This kind of behavior, at least to Mac seemed more associated with disciplining a young child. Of course, the effects of eight years of homelessness and over a year of heavy rehabilitation though weren't going to just vanish overnight either.

*Peter Gabriel's "Quiet and Alone" in the background*


End file.
